An enthusiasm for introducing animals and birds that could be hunted or that re-minded settlers of home swept over the Anglo settler colonies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. The movement was much stronger in Australia and New Zealand than in Canada or the United States, for both biological and social reasons. It represented a generation's ideas about nature and the relationship of human beings to nature—ideas deeply rooted in Western culture. We have inherited the landscapes that they shaped and their ideas as well, though today we express them in very different form.
Much of American environmentalism's passion and political power, as well as shortcomings and tactical failures, have their origin in the movement's demands for new attitudes toward nature as well as new laws and policies. A full understanding of environmentalism requires seeing it as
a secular faith, movement concerned with ultimate questions of humans' place and purpose in the world. This perspective explains much about its development, its emphasis on individual action, the vehemence of its opposition, and its political failure in the last generation. Comparisons with
other national environmental movements, not considered here, constitute an important topic for further research.
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